Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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238. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government the number of extra staff that have been employed in local authorities and to which authorities, to support the housing assistance payment and rent accommodation scheme, and to which scheme they have been allocated; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [16804/16]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Under section 159 of the Local Government Act 2001, each Chief Executive is responsible for staffing and organisational arrangements necessary for carrying out the functions of the local authorities for which he or she is responsible. In this regard, it is a matter, in the first instance, for Chief Executives, to ensure that the appropriate staffing and staffing structures are in place. My Department, however, works closely with local authorities with regard to the implementation of the Government's Social Housing Strategy and in 2015 all local authorities were invited to submit staffing sanction requests to facilitate its delivery.

Furthermore, the staffing approval process was also streamlined to ensure the fast tracking of staffing sanction requests. As a result, to date some four hundred and forty local authority posts have been sanctioned for recruitment, to support the delivery of the Social Housing Strategy, which include posts across the full breadth of housing support services, including supporting existing areas of delivery and resources already deployed in schemes such as the Rental Accommodation Scheme (RAS).

Since the beginning of 2015, my Department has approved 82 staffing applications from local authorities in relation to both the Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) and RAS schemes. Four of the posts sanctioned related to the RAS scheme. A further 34 sanctioned posts related to staffing needs of the central transactional shared service being provided by Limerick City and County Council to all local authorities operating the HAP scheme. The shared service centre, which is the primary administrative support to HAP local authorities, is responsible for a range of functions including monthly payments to landlords and the collection of weekly differential rent from tenants and provides a range of efficiencies to the operation of the scheme. The remaining 44 HAP related posts sanctioned, once recruited, would be assigned to a range of housing related tasks impacted by the introduction of HAP. The table below sets out a breakdown of posts by local authority.